The guns are not yet silent on the Debaltseve salient, but the angels may be heading that way. The cruel waste of conscripted Ukrainian soldiers and Southeastern Ukrainians may finally come to an end…for a while. We will see if their families will seek revenge for their being used as cannon fodder by Kiev’s nationalist thugs and the West in their pillaging of Ukraine.

The good news is that the key parties to the Minsk agreement are calling it successful, indicating that Kiev and the West now view the fighting as a tar baby they want to get off their hands. Up until now they have shamelessly faked their interest in a political settlement while pouring arms and other support into Kiev to continue the fight for a military victory. As we say here in the South, “They lied like a rug.”

The tactical situation is still cloudy. The militias claim the Debaltseve cauldron is closed, and they will only allow a “green corridor” for Kiev’s troops to pull out, meaning they leave their weapons and equipment behind.

Donetsk Prime Minister Zakharchenko tells us the militias have orders to contest any Ukrainian units moving with their weapons, because the Minsk agreements do allow the militias to disarm or neutralize all illegal armed groups inside their territory.

Zakharchenko is recovering from wounds received during a ceasefire violation when he was hit by shrapnel. The Republics stated today that Kiev could not give any order to retreat because the militias have jammed all communications. Jamming is a standard modern tactic to defeat coordinated action by enemy forces.

I spent the last few days watching as much Debaltseve video as I could find with English translations. I saw strong evidence of a complete breakdown of command and control by the Ukrainian Army in the last week. Surrendering PoWs describe orders to hold their positions, but most were down to two days of rations and had not seen ammo resupplies in over a week.

The Ukrainian Army is also continuing the dishonor of abandoning their dead on the battlefield. Our Ukrainian sources tell us this is one of the ways they keep their public KIA numbers down and also avoid paying out benefits to the families. This is disgraceful conduct by their general staff, and one for which they should all be shot.

Western manipulations and deceptions

Western media have sadly played the role of cheerleader during this whole conflict. And I could say even worse… that they have been aiders and abettors to war crimes. When Kiev refused to turn over its air traffic controldata on the MH-17 shoot down, I remember the old days when the press would have fried Kiev’s livers in print, but the press says nothing and are dancing cowards one and all.

When NATO made claim after claim of a pending Russian invasion, none of which happened, I remember a time when print media cartoonists would have made NATO a laughing stock. General Breedlove would have been given a Pinocchio nose, and Kiev’s military PR spokesman would have played “Baghdad Bob” of Persian Gulf War I, who gave Saddam’s daily press briefings on how the Coalition Forces were being destroyed by Iraq’s Republican Guard.

If you think about it for a moment, you probably won’t remember seeing any Western news analysis on what the point was for Kiev to push into the Debaltseve pocket, even while the EU and US were supposedly urging Poroshenko to start negotiations which we now see were a cruel hoax.

Any in-depth discussion of the strategy would have revealed the obvious attempt for a military victory… with two main purposes. First, Debaltseve is the main industrial transportation hub for both the Donetsk and Lugansk industrial regions, and the rail head for moving coal out to the rest of Ukraine. To its west is Gorlikva (also Horlikva), which is the junction for the region’s water mains.

With Kiev in control of those two hubs, it would have had a stranglehold on both Republics’ economies, literally making them unviable. The Debaltseve pocket was also a launching pad for using those transportation lines needed to sustain a push all the way south to prevent the two Republics from supporting each other, and to cut Donetsk off from the Russian border.

NATO advances as EU economy wanes

While this military victory was being pursued by Kiev, EU and NATO countries were shipping arms and non-lethal supplies into the military effort. But they were also steadily advancing NATO bases closer to the Russian border — a serious security concern for Moscow. And as additional cover for this obvious aggression, the world public was treated like we were all idiots, who would believe the constant mantra of “It’s all the Russians’ fault.”

The Financial Times has validated my long stream of articles on the financial black hole Ukraine has been pushed into by the vultures in the West. Industrial production is down over 20% from last year, which already had been struggling. And their economy shrank 15% in the last quarter, with an outlook of getting worse.

Sure, there has to be a rebuilding boom in the SE, the area that has taken all of the war carnage — the rest of the country not even having a broken window — a strange civil war there. But unlike the US that can just print money, or have the Federal Reserve create billion-dollar bank deposits out of thin air, Ukraine’s currency is down the tubes. Their gold has been shipped off to some undisclosed place, and their cost of living increases under the IMF austerity plan will impoverish them for the next generation.

They will never be able to repay the loans, so their national assets will be sold off. Ukrainian assets will be bought for fire sale prices, and it will become the “go to” place for White slave labor with good skills and education.

Austerity – the new indentured servitude

Welcome to the New World Order. German Intel tells us the civil war’s body pile is already 50,000 people high, all in one year’s work. By contrast, America took the whole Vietnam War to kill that many of our own troops. And we hear calls for another Coalition war on Libya “to fix things” in that country. The Western war on terror is the Frankenstein I always said it would be… and it’s not finished yet.

The Ukraine internet abounds with talk of a second Maidan revolution in the works. The Right Sector thugs have gained a lot of combat experience, plus some added extras, like nailing kids to fences and dragging mothers down the road behind APCs.

The West will wear eternal shame for what it has done to Ukraine. Sure, it was a corrupt country when this started, but it is worse now. So that shows the West has really attacked and pillaged the country with a time-delay economic bomb which will go off when all of these loans eventually boomerang back onto Europeans some day in the form of more austerity.

Nikita Khrushchev, who is a hard guy to quote, does have one that perfectly fits the Ukraine situation. “Support by the United States rulers is rather in the nature of the support that the rope gives to a hanged man.”

JD/MKA

JIM W. DEAN

Columnist

Jim W. Dean is managing editor of Veterans Today wearing many hats from day to day operations, development, writing and editing articles. He also has an active schedule of TV and radio interviews as do the other VT editors, and some guest radio hosting on the Rense network.

Such an idiot, that one! But useful, though by now well past his original “sell-by” date.

Surely he knows plenty well what the top American ‘l33t do to their own less-than-optimally-useful idiots. Does he pray to the Magic Spirit of Willy Wonka for an extension, as he lays him down to sleep…? Or is it the Outdated Hovering Image of Helicopter Ben that still gets his votive energy?

For all the good either bit of idolatry might do. His visage in recent photos seems to reflect more of the “death-warmed-over” variety of pasty-face unwellness with each passing month..

Just sayin’… Maybe he should spend a little more time with his family. For his health’s sake. And that is all. 0{:-\o[